We're Going Back Under the House

I guess I shouldn't say 'we' because I'm not the one going under the house but I'll be there encouraging him on and handing him supplies. I thought R had had enough of being underground, but I guess not. Today he said, "Let's look under the other side of the house and see what's up under there."

My guess is he would rather work on heat ducts than cut up wood outside in the 15 degree weather. Even the lure of using his new chainsaw is diminished when he realized that would mean enduring 15 degree weather with a wind chill of about 5 degrees. Next week it is suppose to warm back up and he will be able to cut all the wood he wants. Nothing like the smell of a two stroke engine on a cold morning......it smells of......oil and gas.....what did you think I was going to say? Victory? Robert Duvall was great in Apocalypse Now and loved him in Days of Thunder, cheesy movie but the character he was portraying was classic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPXVGQnJm0w

The house has a basement under the center portion of the house. The wings of the house, on the other hand, just have crawl spaces. The area we opened up today is under the living room and it has a much deeper crawl space. R could sit up easily everywhere and in some spots he could actually partially stand up.

We suspected that we had a disconnected run and possibly some rips in other runs because of the weak flow of heated air coming out of several registers. Sure enough, one run is completely gone and a second is badly damaged. Both of those will immediately be replaced with sheet metal round ducts like what we used under the family room/library. The rips will be repaired on the flexible ducts and this summer we will replace those runs with sheet metal ducts.

There is also trash that someone either left behind or thought "what the heck" and threw it in the crawl space. That 'stuff' will need to be thrown away, also. 'Stuff' like these tennis shoes, carpet, and Santa Claus decorations that R tossed out today. Unfortunately, there is plenty more under there.Tonight we made the first Home Depot trip to pick up supplies. I estimate three trips will be required to finish this project.

So it looks like I have to listen to sports radio for another day or two.

Back Under the House, One Last Time

We are keeping our fingers crossed that today was the last time R will need to crawl under that portion of the house.

Today ended with the heat ducts peaking out of the opening that leads to the crawl space under the family room/library.Before anyone asks....no we did not do that hack job on the floor joist. That fine piece of work was done by the same people who installed the plastic flexible duct that fell off the registers and then proceeded to rot away. We will attempt to add bracing before we close the opening.

We made sure all sections of duct were attached to one another with 3 sheet metal screws and then wrapped with aluminum tape to ensure that none of the precious heated air leaks into the unheated crawl space.

Here is a photo of R taping one of the last seams in the crawl space.Notice the dirt on R's hand and sleeve. All the dirt in the crawl space is clay and the top layer is like pulverized clay. So unfortunately as he crawls around he is also putting up a dust cloud that he then has to breathe. As he was backing his way out of the crawl space he doubled checked to make sure he didn't leave anything behind because he doesn't want to go back into the crawl space again.

Tomorrow we start attaching the old heat ducts to the new heat ducts. A mere 2 1/2 to 3 feet but somehow I think this will take us all day and I predict at least one trip to Home Depot.
After the heat ducts are attached we will close off the opening to keep cold air from entering into the basement. Can you believe that they just left it open? No wonder their heating bills were huge during the winter.

After we bought the house we found out their utility bills ran about $800 during the winter. Well of course, not only were heat ducts not attached to the registers, the plastic duct were also ripped or torn, but the renters had something plugged into every outlet in the house. Some outlets had 3 or 4 cords plugged into them. I told R that the wiring must be OK or they would have burned down the house by the time we did our first walk through.

Hydraulic Cement Cured and View of the Crawl Space

I thought I'd let you see how the patch looked after the hydraulic cement cured. The cement is a darker gray than regular concrete.

Here's is a before photo. And here is the after photo.We are back to working on the duct work in the crawl space. What a mess. R barely has enough room to crawl. I was able to hand him small items through the register in the floor but that will stop once we attach the long runs of duct work.

Check out this photo of the crawl space. Not much crawling space plus it's decorated with nice cob webs and left over old disconnected knob and tube wire.